The Best Buttery Gluten Free Shortbread
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This Gluten-Free Shortbread recipe is the melt in mouth buttery biscuit with a touch of crunch that you know and love. A classic Scottish recipe which here uses oat flour, cornmeal and tapioca flour for a wonderful taste and texture with no xanthan gum. It’s incredibly quick to make and so versatile that you can adapt it to endless flavour variations.
The quest for the perfect Gluten-Free Shortbread was not one undertaken lightly. I have an absolute weakness for shortbread and dearly missed it when I switched to a gluten-free diet. Although humble in origin, the beautiful buttery taste of shortbread elevates the confection to a more special status than mere biscuit or cookie.
The right gluten-free flour combination for this particular bake eluded me for a long time. It is often the case that the simpler baked goods can be more tricky to convert into gluten free recipes, especially where regular flour is such an integral part of the recipe with few other ingredients. So I threw myself a mini party when achieving this delicious gluten-free version which produced the perfect shortbread in taste and texture.
What is shortbread?
Shortbread is a traditional Scottish confection made with sugar, butter and flour. The earliest printed recipe is credited to a Mrs McLintock in 1736. However, the first versions as a bread dough to which melted butter was added can be traced back to medieval times.
Shortbread needs to have a beautiful buttery taste and a slight bite upfront that gives way to a sandy crumb. In modern versions white rice flour is often included to encourage the crunch. Conversely cornflour is sometimes added to accentuate a soft sandy texture.
Shortbread is so much more than a humble biscuit. In fact its national status as a ‘speciality item of flour confectionary’ was fought vehemently by the Scottish Association of Master Bakers so that it would not be taxed as a biscuit. This simple cookie is often gifted at Christmas in decorative tins and certainly not out of place at high tea.
Why You’ll Love This Gluten-Free Shortbread
- Tastes just like your favourite classic shortbread with a perfect toasted buttery flavour.
- Soft texture with a touch of crunch and slight crumble
- An easy recipe to make with just 3 gluten-free flours and 4 other simple ingredients.
- Ultra quick. 10 minutes of hands on work then just 30 minutes in the oven.
- No xanthan gum - it's not needed thanks to our carefully chosen blend of gluten-free flours. READ MORE >>> Why I don't bake with xanthan gum
Watch to see how to make it
Sometimes it helps to see a visual of what I'm talking about. So watch the video to see what it looks like to make your shortbread.
Gluten-free flours needed
After many recipe tests where the shortbread was either too crumbly, too gummy or not enough bite I eventually discovered the perfect gluten-free flour blend for this recipe which only needs 3 flours:
Oat flour. This wholegrain flour is used for its light tender crumb and delicious butterscotch taste which works beautifully with the butter and vanilla.
Cornmeal (not cornflour / corn starch). In regular shortbread the wheat flour can be cut with white rice flour to add crunch. I found without the wheat flour to temper it the white rice flour made the shortbread claggy. Cornmeal is an excellent substitution. I found a very fine white cornmeal which worked well here but any cornmeal will do. The courser the grind though the more definitive the crunch. Note. polenta is a course grind cornmeal
Tapioca flour. This is a starchy flour which we need to stop our shortbread from crumbling apart.
Gluten-Free Flour Cheatsheet
The Gluten-Free Flour Cheatsheet makes choosing the right flour easy, breaking down every option from sorghum to cassava into four simple categories. With nutritional info, flavour pairings, and a printable reference section, this guide cuts through the confusion so you can navigate gluten-free baking with clear flour choices.
Other ingredients
Unsalted butter. We need unsalted so we can control the salt content of the recipe. Make sure it is at room temperature.
Caster sugar. It’s a fine white baking sugar available in the UK. If you can only get hold of granulated sugar you can grind more finely in the food processor before you use it in the recipe.
Vanilla extract. I like to use a good quality extract for shortbread as there are so little ingredients that each one should really count, I like Nielsen Massey.
Salt. I like to use kosher salt in my baking as it has a round gentle flavour. Using salt in your baked goods lifts and sharpens all the other flavours.
How to make Gluten-Free Shortbread
Shortbread is a minimal effort type of bake. It takes about 10 minutes to mix all the ingredients together and only 30 minutes in the oven. For full recipe instructions go to the recipe card at the end of this post.
Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the vanilla extract.
Sift the flours together with the salt then beat in. Press the soft dough into a cake tin. Bake for 30 minutes. Leave to cool completely to room temperature in the tin for an hour before removing onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
Expert Tips
Use the best unsalted butter you can find. It really makes a difference as this is the overriding flavour of your shortbread.
Use the best quality vanilla extract. I like Nielsen Massey here.
Gluten-free shortbread won’t brown too much. This is correct, you want it to be quite pale with a slight nod towards going golden. However if you are using yellow cornmeal rather than white then it will colour slightly more.
If your scoring has disappeared during the bake then re-score lightly in its tin as soon as it comes out of the oven, be careful as it's very crumbly at this stage.
Leave the shortbread in the tin as long as possible. I recommend at least an hour but I have been known to place it in its tin straight into the fridge from the oven to cool and remove from the tin a couple of hours later ready to cut.
Leave the shortbread to cool completely before cutting. Otherwise it has a tendency to crumble. The shortbread will firm up as it cools.
Flavour variations
Plain unadorned shortbread is delicious as it is but if you wanted to jazz it up slightly then let’s go for it.
Chocolate Caramel Shortbread
Here the shortbread is drizzled with 2 tablespoons melted chocolate, 2 tablespoons dulce de leche and a crumble of sea salt. The dulce de leche is warmed up slightly to make for easy drizzling.
Other ideas
If chocolate and caramel aren’t your thing then there are so many other routes you can go. The earliest versions of shortbread included preserved lemon, orange peel, nuts and caraway seeds. All of which would be delicious. Here are some other suggestions to add to your dough before baking.
- Lemon Shortbread – add the zest of 1 lemon
- Lavender Shortbread – 2 tablespoons of fresh chopped lavender flowers
- Chocolate Chips - a handful of chocolate chips.
- Strawberry Black Pepper Shortbread - 3 tablespoons of freeze-dried strawberry powder and ¼ teaspoon of cracked black pepper.
- Ginger Shortbread – 2 tablespoons diced stem ginger and 1 teaspoon ground ginger.
- Iced Shortbread - Beat 180g icing sugar with the juice of 1 small lemon together and spoon over your cooled shortbread. You can also flavour the icing with any of the flavour variations mentioned above.
Serving suggestions for shortbread
Although an excellent accompaniment to tea or coffee, shortbread can often elevate a dessert. Try serving shortbread alongside:
- Chocolate mousse
- Affogato
- Lemon Posset
- Strawberries and Cream
- Crumbled over ice cream
FAQs
This shortbread is best stored at room temperature in an airtight container and will last up to 5 days.
Absolutely. The easiest way is to can use a rolling pin to roll the cookie dough into a quarter inch thick circle and use your favourite cookie cutters to cut out your preferred shapes. Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet until golden brown but the baking time will be reduced from the original recipe below.
Other classic gluten-free British recipes:
- Gluten-Free Eccles Cakes
- Gluten-Free Fruit Cake
- Rice Flour Madeira Cake
- Vinegar Cake
- Gluten-Free Victoria Sponge
- Gluten-Free Scones
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Buttery Gluten-Free Shortbread
Ingredients
- 225 g unsalted butter
- 100 g caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 150 g oat flour
- 125 g very fine white cornmeal
- 50 g tapioca flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C / 160°C fan assisted oven / gas mark 4 / 320°F
- Line and grease a 20cm (8 inch round cake tin).
- Beat the butter and sugar together for 3-4 minutes until light and creamy.
- Add the vanilla extract and stir to combine.
- Sift together the oat flour, cornmeal, tapioca flour and salt then add to the butter and sugar. Beat until it is fully incorporated.
- Tip the dough into the baking tin and press into the tin using your hands.
- Use a sharp knife to gently score four lines across the diagonal of the shortbread to mark out the intended slices.
- Pierce the surface of the shortbread with the tines of a fork a couple of times to let the air escape.
- Bake for 30 minutes until the top is just starting to turn golden.
- Remove from oven then rest the shortbread for an hour in the tin before removing. Leave to cool completely on a cooling rack before cutting into wedges.
Thank you for all your ideas and tips...now I have no excuse not to bake! However I do have a problem with finding some of the ingredients in SW France. I really want to do shortbread for Christmas but can't find fine oatmeal flour or fine white cornmeal. If I put oatmeal in the blender will this make flour? and is Maizena (cornstarch) the same as white cornmeal, hmmm I think not!
We haven't eaten the Christmas pudding yet, but it looks great!
You can put the oatmeal in the blender to make the flour, that will work fine. The cornmeal is more like polenta (not the white powdery cornstarch) if you can find that. The finer the grind of polenta the better.
Just wondering. if you are using the corn for the crunch, could I rough grind some sorghum and use that instead?
It pops like popcorn, which is what made me think it might work.
What do I use if I cannot have corn?
At the moment I don't have an alternative for the cornmeal used in this recipe I'm afraid.
I am at high altitude, Colorado.
Mine came out under cooked. I'm popping it back in for additional time. Hoping it does the trick.
Let me know how it goes - I have no experience of baking at high altitude so it always interests me how the recipes get on in those parts of the world.